Join the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Zeitgeist DC (Austrian Cultural Forum Washington, Goethe-Institut Washington and the Embassy of Switzerland) and the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University for performances of the Swiss theater company MerciMax’s Coffee and Prejudice as part of “Participatory Theater: The Intersection of Theater and Social Action.”

STC’s Drew Lichtenberg and Nathanael Johnson, in collaboration with the Zurich-based MerciMax, present an American adaptation of the award-winning Coffee & Prejudice, which invites the audience to test its powers of judgment live in a 1:1 confrontation.

More information about Participatory Theater: The Intersection of Theater and Social Action

The cutting-edge theater genre “Participatory Theater” will be the focus of the 2014 Zeitgeist DC International Festival and Symposium. Theater innovators from Germany, Switzerland and Austria will collaborate with Washington, DC actors and directors on audience-interactive performance events and a unique hands-on symposium. The Festival will examine integrative techniques, technology design and theory.

Participatory theater lies at the intersection of aesthetics, action and experience. In participatory theater, audience members interact and engage with the performance and the artists. A highlight of this three-day theater event, now in its fourth year, will be the transatlantic dialogue addressing the shifting balance between the artist and the audience in performance and its potential for questioning form, aesthetics, and content in theater art, civil engagement and social justice. Audience members can explore issues, develop a sense of ownership, and work together to think about how change can happen.

Organized by Zeitgeist DC, a collaboration of the Goethe-Institut Washington, the Embassy of Switzerland and the Austrian Cultural Forum, in partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (Georgetown University), the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, dog & pony dc, and Sojourn Theater. Festival Director: Gillian Drake and Symposium Director: Derek Goldman.